Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [244]
‘Yes, I told him,’ had said Julius, still a little ruffled. ‘But he knew. His lordship had already threatened to call on him.’
‘Oh,’ said Anna. She sighed. ‘I have to say, I am not fond of Moscow. It is inconvenient to have so little freedom. But if we all go to Novgorod, it will be better.’ Her head turned in the crook of his arm, and she laughed up at him with those inviting, sparkling eyes. He kissed them, as a beginning.
‘IT IS CONSIDERED PROPER,’ said the Patriarch of Antioch, ‘to mourn for a grandfather. I am sorry to see you indifferent.’
He spoke in French. Julius and Dymitr had gone, but the Russian monks were still there at the small table, quietly conversing. Nicholas was standing by the narrow, mica-filled window, red in the sunset. He did not reply.
‘On the other hand, you have eaten little,’ the Patriarch said. ‘A mark of refined sensibilities or common belly-ache.’ And as Nicholas still did not answer: ‘Do I seem to you brainless? Or pukingly sentimental? Or an obnoxious maker of tyrannical demands?’
‘All of these,’ Nicholas said. But he turned. The monks had stopped speaking, which was not surprising, as the Patriarch’s voice had increased to a shout.
‘Very well,’ said Ludovico da Bologna. ‘Come here. Drop on your knees. Bend that stiff neck and fold those murderous hands and be quiet and listen. My friends’ — looking to the table and switching to calm, resonant Russian — ‘my brethren in Christ, this young man has lost a revered grandfather, excellent, noble, well loved, and would have us utter prayers for his soul. Will you join me?’
They came forward and knelt, and the ruddy light touched their crowns and their hands, its blessing impartial, while Latin and Greek sent Thibault de Fleury on his way.
Chapter 34
SINCE NO MAN is a God, the dark days between November and December witnessed a mild diminution of Julius’s ardour, which of course Anna understood and forgave. At the same time, she began to find Moscow tiresome. In the Crimea, her own mistress, planning, intriguing, negotiating her way to success, she had found every day stimulating — or, at least, until Nicholas left. Now, the planning and negotiating were appropriated by Julius, whose growing enthusiasm for founding a Russian-based business had first surprised her, and then caused her to remonstrate. ‘We have to go back. You are making promises we can’t really fulfil.’ And, of course, he agreed. But all the same, as the date approached for their journey to Novgorod, he seemed to be interviewing more merchants, and visiting Nicholas in the Troitsa more often. While she was debarred.
She was not, of course, wholly confined. Her face and head covered, her feet booted, fur-lined cloak folded tightly about her, she stood on the bridges and walked on the ice of Moscow’s two encircling rivers where the markets were held and the wind was less searing. The bright-coloured bustling peasants brought Bruges and Poland to mind, but here, they showed their wares differently. When you bought meat in Bruges, you did not look to find it mustered to await you, as here, on the frozen waterways, where the beasts stood motionless on the snow in their hundreds, skinned and frozen and stiff as humble clay offerings. From hares to chickens, from pyramids of butter to eggs, everything in the market was frozen, and sold by the axe, whose crack and thud resounded back from the walls, followed like cannon shot by glittering fragments. In Moscow, the meat on your table had been killed three months before. Walking about, she made useful acquaintances. Men who had vegetables to sell, or honey in summer. Unemployed men who would do anything.
The market only lasted until just after noon, for daylight began to vanish soon after, and the custom was to repair to the taverns and stay there. It infuriated the western merchants, some of whom she knew from Thorn